A pleasant exploration of Jogja
We flew in to Yogyakarta, from Kuala Lumpur. YIA, the new airport of ‘Jogja’, was opened in early 2020, was then open for three months, to close again because of COVID. In 2022 it was opened permanently. A whole 50k from town, but also nice and quiet.
Before flying to East Asia, I was ignorant enough to not realise that Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia (though perhaps not for much longer) and Yogyakarta were two different cities. Both on the island of Java, one of no less than 17000 islands in the Indonesian archipelago, they’re a few hundred kilometres apart. And where Jakarta is now the largest city on earth, with over 41 million inhabitants, greater Jogja’s has a more manageable 4 million or so.
I was expecting a city more like Chiang Mai, and was not disappointed. The city is very pleasant.
We had come to Jogja because I had managed to organise a Dérive app workshop, together with the cultural center Kunci and the walkers’ collective Jalan Gembira. And I had managed to secure funding from the Marinus Plantema Foundation. They wouldn’t cover my travel to Indonesia, but it did allow us to upgrade our accommodation somewhat, which then saw us stay at a hotel that doubled as a greenhouse, growing its own herbs and vegetables on the premises.
Surprisingly, Jakarta and Yogyakarta do not share an etymological origin. Jakarta derives from the Sanskrit for “victory accomplished”, composed of two parts, ‘jaya’, meaning “victory, conquest” and ‘krta’, meaning “done, accomplished”. Yogyakarta is named after the Indian city of Ayodhya, supposedly the birthplace of the Rama from the Ramayana epic. ‘Yogya’ means “suitable; fit; proper”, and ‘karta’, apparently not the same as ‘krta’, means “prosperous; flourishing”. So, ‘Yogyakarta’ means “[a city that is] fit to prosper”.
On our first full day, we rented a small motorbike and explored the city. We stopped to check out a covered market and, at 10am, all stall holders got out of their shops to line the isles. Music started playing, and everyone joined in to sing the national anthem, after which everyone applauded.
I remembered similar scenes from Chiang Mai. But only on days where the noise of the streets didn’t overwhelm the sounds piping from the speakers hanging throughout town. This seemed similar here, as we only experienced this one other time, while at an airport, waiting for our flight to leave.
In the evening, we stopped at a bar which only served pretty strong, alcohol-free, herbal drinks. The owner was a sweet little lady who didn’t speak anything but Bahasa, while the shop itself more resembled a scene from some mediaeval ghost story, but perhaps in a friendly way. We managed to convey that the lady should really choose our potions and, after a good look at both of us, she knew exactly what to serve us.
The workshop was a success. We had about 2 dozen participants who, in three groups, explored the city using Dérive app. And, afterwards, the group had fun putting together a new deck of task cards, prompts, for Jogja.
Somewhat to my surprise, Yogyakarta did not feel touristy at all, even though it has two major tourist attractions practically on its doorstep; the Borobudur and Prambanan temples, the second largest Buddhist temple in the world (after Angkor Wat) and the largest Hindu temple in Indonesia. And, both are World Heritage Sites.
There’s a third important temple near Jogja. The ‘chicken temple’, though supposedly representing a dove, is, really, a must-see.
Exploring the city, and, later, Bali and Jakarta, it was starting to dawn on me to what extent Indonesian culture has been integrated in the Netherlands, while at the same time the Dutch past in Indonesia, though noticeable in many nooks and crannies, does not seem to play a huge role in the mind of most Indonesians. Not because the Dutch occupation wasn’t brutal. It was. After all, it was the Dutch, in the person of JP Coen, who was responsible for what historians agree on was the only successful genocide in world history, thus far; the destruction of the people of the Banda Islands in the service of the trade in nutmeg.
However, after Sukarno, first president of an independent Indonesia after Dutch withdrawal, the dictator Suharto oversaw the murder of between 500.000 and 1 million Indonesians, suspected of being ‘communist’, while putting another million in concentration camps. In other words, the Dutch might have been bad, Suharto was pretty horrible.
In the Netherlands, Indonesian food and derivatives are everywhere. But, also, up to 2 million Dutch nationals, out of a population of some 18 million, have an ethnic connection with Indonesia. Walking the streets of Indonesia, I realised how many faces I would have considered plainly Dutch, in Holland, but are really Indonesian. Perhaps, in part, this history is obfuscated in the Netherlands because, at least to some extent, it arrived in Holland via Suriname, to where many Indonesians were convinced to move after the abolishing of slavery.
Several times, I managed to enjoy a dawet, an iced sweet drink that typical contains pandan-flavoured green rice flour jelly, coconut milk, and palm sugar syrup. Pandan is a tropical plant that’s often used in Southeast Asia to flavour foods, such that I assumed I would be tasting matcha, when it was actually pandan.
It resembles a boba tea, though boba is made from cassava, not rice, and only emerged in the 1980s, in Taiwan, while dawet (or cendol) has been around for centuries.
Driving around Jogja, on multiple occasions, we encountered musicians playing at busy crossroads. One person would perform, both sing and play an instrument, another would collect donations. At a particular crossroads on our way to Prambanan, multiple crossdressers were using little karaoke machines to almost aggressively entertain the drivers.